The ever evolving thing that is the Art Car Boot Fair is back for more, Karen Ashton and her team have announced their next event. Following on from this Summer’s return to post-lockdown real life with a busy fair in the London sunshine at Kings Cross, the ACBF present their next event, a winter on-line event called It’s A Pattern. This time around you will find around 150 carefully selected and invited artists as well as a number of galleries who will show their work and offer it for sale at those traditional collector-friendly prices you’d expect from the rather unique thing that is the Art Car Boot Fair.

The full line up has just been announced, find all the names on the event website, the fair opens on the ACBF website on Thursday December 1st, it will run until Sunday December 4th. You will need to buy a ticket to access the site and get first pickings,  the “First Access” tickets, priced at £10, allow collectors to view and buy the work from 6pm on Thursday December 1st, entry then becomes free to everyone at 8am on Friday 2nd December, the event will run until midnight on December 4th.

Once again Karen Ashton and her team have carefully curated the event that will feature lots of familiar regulars as well as some exciting new artists showing with the Fair for the first time. Next year marks the twentieth anniversary of the rather special thing that is the Art Car Boot Fair, a fair that always has had a strong reputation for finding new talent. The full list of participating artists and such can be found on the event website.

And we have said this before but it is well worth saying again, one of the important things that sets the Art Car Boot Fair apart is the fact that it is artist-led and it is very about curation rather than just letting anyone willing to pay an often excessive fee take part. Most Art Fairs will simply put up an open call direct all their advertising at artists and and then charge any artist willing to pay to take part an often (very) large fee, all those Other art fairs and such, pretty much every single one of them rather cynically charge us artists to take part, they treat us as little more than cash cows. There’s very little curation with most fairs, they accept anyone willing to go through a submission process and then pay the often stupidly outrageous prices they charge us to take part. The Art Car Boot Fair does it the right way, the Art Car Boot Fair actively search out their artists, there is no submission process, the artists are proactively found at shows and such, and, this bit is important, the organisers charge us artists nothing, not a single thing. We artists are all invited, none of us made a submission, none of us pay a fee (and yes, I am one of the participating artists), it is important that this is said, that people do appreciate that this is a properly curated event. The Art Car Boot Fair is rather unique, it is very artist-friendly and yes, you could argue that the fair has long been vital part of any art year. As an artist I’m excited to be taking part again, it always feels special to be invited, something never to be taken for granted. if you want to support us artists, then this is as fine a way as any to do just that.  

And so, the Winter 2022 Art Car Boot Fair is online from 6pm on December 1st, if you’re a serious collector you might want a ticket, if you just want to explore and maybe do a bit of Christmas shopping or feel like treating yourself then there will be some very affordable art on sale and entry will be free from Friday morning on December 2nd, of course if you just want to go look and explore some art and some artists, then the first weekend of December ids the time to go enjoy doing just that, the Art Car Boot Fair isn’t all about buying, Stay tuned for more build up in the next nine days…